Nationwide said that the gap between house prices in London and the rest of the UK is the widest it has ever been, both in cash and percentage terms.

Prices in the south of England are now closer to their pre-crisis level than most other parts of the UK.

A string of recent studies have pointed to signs that the housing market is picking up, helped by Government initiatives such as Funding for Lending, which gives lenders access to cheap finance and has prompted a sharp increase in mortgage availability as well as lenders slashing their rates.

Schemes such as Help to Buy, which will be fully launched next year, have been introduced to help borrowers with smaller deposits and there have been reports of more first-time buyers entering the market in recent months.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, which represents banks and building societies, recently said that May was the best month it has seen for mortgage lending since 2008.

At the same time, Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist, said there were few signs that the supply of housing is improving significantly.

"Construction data point to a further decline in building activity in recent quarters from already depressed levels," he said.

"For example, in the first quarter of 2013 housing completions in England were down 8pc compared to the same period of 2012 and around 40pc below the average number of quarterly completions in 2007”.

Matthew Pointon, a property economist at Capital Economics, suggested that even though house prices were drifting gently upwards, price gains were not accelerating as household sector finances are "simply not strong enough to support a significant rise in prices".

"It is not so clear that house prices will see significant gains. Many of the major banks are still in the process of improving their capital positions. So a large share of new mortgages are likely to be funded from the repayment of existing mortgages,limiting the amount of new credit flowing into the housing market," he added.

"More fundamentally, it is hard to see how stretched households will be able to shoulder a steady rise in house prices. Data released on Thursday showed that real household disposable income dropped by 1.7pc in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly fall since 1987. That does not suggest buyers will be in a position to start offering a lot more for their new home."